Running in Circles

Saturday, February 4, 2012

the pill.I wake up every morning and take a pill. This pill makes me stop wanting to kill myself. This pill helps me live to see the next morning when I take the next pill to live for the next day.

I go to bed every night and take a pill. This pill helps me sleep through the thoughts of killing myself. This pill helps me sleep through the night to be rested enough to live through the day to take the next pill to sleep through the next night.

Every morning I wake up, and every night I go to sleep, and I take pills that help me stay alive.

Sometimes I think about the pills. About why I take the pills. Sometimes I take the pills and wonder: if I take this pill to make me not want to die, what is the point in living? These pills don’t give me a will to live. They don’t give me goals or purpose. They don’t give life meaning, and they don’t make me feel better. They make me stop wanting to kill myself, a cognitive-emotional state much different from wanting to live.

I hate myself for being a drain on the healthcare system. My cognitive ambivalence is painful. I believe that people like me should be allowed to die. There’s no sense in medicating me to help me live. It’s not like I’m going to accomplish anything.

beauty.

I’m not a writer, philosopher or singer. I’m not famous in any way. I’m a ‘nobody,’ but I have nothing to lose. I don’t fit in with society. I never have. I have social anxiety and I cope by being obscene. People say I don’t fit in ‘the box,’ but that’s only because I don’t know where the box is.

I was always taught to write without contractions. I obviously don’t follow rules. I was also taught that perfect wasn’t perfect enough, and that people only love you if you’re a socially acceptable form of ‘beautiful.’ I’m not. I’m ‘quirky beautiful,’ and my hips and bum are too big to fit into brand name clothing.

Socially Beautiful: A state of being. Includes attributes such as: tanned skin, straight or wavy hair, blue or brown eyes, slender build, and flawless skin.

Beauty is a social construct. I live in a society that doesn’t view my appearance as beautiful. After contemplating where I’d fit in best, I realized I don’t. My skin is too light for the cultures that I’m aware of that appreciate a thick build for women. My skin is too dark for those that favor paleness. I have a pink undertone, not olive or yellow. My hair is curly, but mousey brown.

I’m Canadian, but I prefer ‘favor’ to ‘favour,’ ‘behavior’ to ‘behaviour,’ and so on.

Most of my work is left unfinished.

I found some of my old written thoughts, and then I cried.

I cried because I remember at one point being so sad that I didn't want to live anymore. I remember at one point feeling so alone. I remember at one point refusing to make plans because 'I'd probably kill myself before then anyway.'

And then I cried again because I'm so thankful that I have made changes in my life to make myself happy now. I love my friends and family, and I feel loved by them too. I feel socially connected. I have goals and aspirations. I found some of my old written thoughts, and then I cried.

Monday, January 9, 2012

One day I carved hope into my leg. Until recently, I never really experienced hope in terms of the optimistic emotional state. Self-mutilation was my idea of at least having some hope.

I felt like I had no one.

I started hurting myself when I was in grade eight. My first “suicide attempt” wasn’t actually an attempt to die; it was an attempt to get affection and attention. My anxiety and depression started around the same time. I felt worthless. I felt like I was alone. I received a clinical diagnosis of depression and anxiety when I was in grade twelve, at which point my self-mutilation and suicide attempts became more frequent. I started having psychogenic seizures as a symptom of my pent up depression and anxiety. Although I sought help from a psychiatrist and a psychologist, I felt like I was moving through this emotional time alone.

In retrospect, my family was supportive of me. I was blind to this until years later.

One day I carved hope into my leg. I am haunted by my choice to self-mutilate.

I have made a number of changes in my life. I have grown as an individual. I have self-esteem. I have self-worth. I still struggle with depression and anxiety, but I am now able to cope. I am much stronger now than I ever was before. In fact, a number of friends have started to rely on me for emotional support. It feels foreign to me; I grew accustomed to being the person seeking support, not the one being supportive.

I’m proud of myself for who I have become.

One day I carved hope into my leg. I have scars that I hide under my clothes because I’m ashamed of how I used to “cope” with my feelings.

I feel sorry for myself, sorry that my self-esteem ever got that low, but at the same time I feel glad. I’m glad I had those experiences because they have given me more insight into life than I ever could have read in a textbook. I feel like I can sympathize with my friends from a common understanding of what it feels like to hurt, what it feels like to be sad, and what it feels like to be anxious.

One day I carved hope into my leg.

I hadn’t experienced hope in terms of the optimistic emotional state until now. I have scars on my body, but these experiences have carved hope into my heart. Even when I am feeling down, I still have hope – not just the word lingering on my skin, but that optimistic emotional state I once longed for.

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Monday, June 13, 2011

Last night my dad got mad at me because I didn’t finish my dinner. I have two issues with this.

1. I’m a grown woman. I’ll eat what I want to eat, when I want to eat it. I appreciate that he made dinner last night, and sure, I probably should have finished those delicious looking potatoes, BUT...

2. I get really afraid of food sometimes. Ever since the gluten incident in Mexico, I’ve been scared. Sometimes I will wash CLEAN dishes before I use them, just in case. Dad made dinner on the BBQ last night. Steak for the grown-ups, chicken nuggets for the kiddos, and potatoes on the side. He cooked the nuggets on the top rack. Nuggets are breaded. Bread crumbles when it gets dried out from the heat. Gravity exists.

I inspected my dinner as I ate it, picking off anything that looked like it might not belong in my tummy. The steak was fine. The peas were cooked in a separate dish, so they were fine. The potatoes were covered in little flakes and dots of seasoning and death.

I was afraid to eat the potatoes, which is why I didn’t finish my dinner. This post isn’t really about dinner, it is about fear. I fear food because of what it can do to me. I’m afraid of getting sick because it hurts so much. It gets to the point where I worry about my food being contaminated so much that the worry of contamination makes me feel ill. Ugh.

Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Sometimes after I hear a new song on the radio, it gets stuck in my head. Sometimes I don't catch all of the words, just the tune and stuttering of syllables. I try to sing my way through it to try to find those missing words. Sometimes I forget them altogether and I’m stuck with:

da dah da dah dada

da dahda da dahda da daaaaaah dahhhh

hmmm da dah dah dada da

da dah daaah dada da hmmmdaaaa dah

I’m a resourceful person. I’m a creative person. I think outside the box, and I make up my own words.I feel the night come downdarkness, and I will come find you.

hmmm da dah dah dada da

there’s just something about the night time.

And then I hear that song again, and the words are wrong, and the tune isn’t quite what I remembered, and I wish they wrote it my way because it stuck much better in my head.

Thursday, May 26, 2011

WARNING: this is a serious rant, and has a bit of 'adult' language. I don't care if you like this post or not. I don't care if my grammar sucks, or if things are misspelled. I need to get this rage the HELL out of my system, and this is my way of doing so.

I haven’t eaten gluten since October of last year. It’s not because it isn’t tasty- I miss the hell out of gluten-filled food. It is because I get really sick when I eat it.

I haven’t eaten gluten since October of last year. That’s a lie. I’ve eaten gluten about 5 times since then, and each time I have been violently ill. One time, I ate two bites of breaded shrimp. (do you know how hard it is to watch other people eat your favourite foods that you KNOW you can’t eat any more?) I felt my stomach turn while we were in the restaurant. I did my best to maintain my composure, I clenched my fists through the cramping, and I swallowed back my urge to vomit. I was shaking and sweating, we paid our bills and left. I drove a friend home, and normally we’d sit in the driveway and chat. This time I didn’t even pull in to the drive way. I didn’t even put the car in park. I drove home quickly and ran to the bathroom. I vomited so hard I got a nose bleed. And then I shit myself. That’s right. I’m a grown woman, and I shit myself.

That’s what gluten does to me. The same thing happened when I was on vacation in Mexico, except I ate more than two bites. I thought that what I was eating was gluten-free, but there was some mix-up with the order. After drunkenly devouring an entire plate of food, I was hit like a Mack truck with a wall of “oh no” on my insides. I spent that night in the bathroom on the toilet with a bucket on my lap. At one point that night I tried to shower because I had vomited on myself. I never made it back to my bed, and I spent the next two days lying naked on my hotel room floor in a pile of my own ‘gluten intolerance.’ Yay vacation...

I used to get sick all the time. That’s why I stopped eating gluten. My sister tried a gluten-free diet and it seemed to really work for her, so I figured I’d give it a shot. I am a student. I don’t work during the school year. I work in the summer, and save as much as I can. My parents (thank God) pay my tuition. OSAP helps with the rest. I’ve been to college for three years, and I just finished my second year of university. I used to be able to make ends meet financially. Used to.

Now, a loaf of gluten-free bread costs $6-9, depending on how much you like the texture of Styrofoam. Now, a box of gluten-free cereal costs $7, and that isn’t for the family size. Want to go eat at a restaurant? Good luck. Fast food? HA. Nice try. Grab something quick on the way out the door? That works if you just want an apple. Want some cookies? Be prepared to spend AT LEAST $4 for a box of 12. And those are the gross kind. The good kind are $7/12pk.

Do I need to start taking out more OSAP? Should I cut down the features on my cell phone? Ask Mum and Dad for more help? What do I do? Government to the rescue!

A friend of mine informed me that the government offers a tax break for people with celiac disease. You can claim your groceries as a health expense (or something like that, Dad looked into the details for me) and get money back to make up for the cost of living gluten-free. All you have to do is get a formal diagnosis, and you’re set! :D

Here’s the fun part! Guess what’s involved with a formal diagnosis? I asked my doctor today, and this is what she told me:

“Well you can go and get the blood test done. It isn’t very effective, so it isn’t worth much. I don’t even think the government would take that as proof. The best test to do is a biopsy. They take a camera to guide a pincer through your colon and intestines, and take a few samples. The samples get sent to a lab, and they can tell you if you have celiac disease. This test is only 75% effective. And all you have to do is eat a gluten-filled diet for two weeks before the procedure. Want me to set it up?”

EXCUSE ME? A gluten-FILLED diet for two weeks? And it is only SEVENTY FIVE PERCENT effective? So TWENTY FIVE percent of the time, a person WITH celiac disease will not receive a diagnosis?

I thanked my doctor for her time, and left. I nearly started to cry.

Fun fact: eating large quantities of gluten can cause intestinal and colon cancer in people with celiac disease. I wonder if they’d take that as proof.